


The Financial Condition 



PRESENT NEEDS 



COLUMBIA COLLEG 



H 



A Statement Adopted by the Trustees of the College, 
. AND Ordered to be Printed, April 2, 1883. 



New York: 
PRINTED FOR THE COLLEGE. 

1883. 



The Financial Condition 



PRESENT NEEDS 



\) V- \ Y 



UMBIA COLLEGE, 



A Statement Adopted by the Trustees of the College, 
AND Ordered to be Printed, April 2, 1883. 



New York: 
PRINTED FOR THE COLLEGE. 

1883. 



■ hi 



Macgowan & Slipper, Steam Printkrs, 
30 Beekman Street, New York. 



11V\^J YORK PUBL. HBI?l. 
m KXCHANQS. 



BE SOLUTION 

Adopted by the Board of Trustees of Columbia College, 
in Session, April 2, 1883. 

Resolved, That the form of Statement submitted 
by the Select Committee of Five appointed to consider 
the expediency of appealing to the public for means to 
give greater completeness to the scheme of instruction 
in the college be adopted ; and that the same be printed 
in pamphlet form for general distribution, and also that 
copies be furnished to the press. 



FINANCIAL CONDITION AND PRESENT NEEDS 

OF 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



The Trustees of Columbia College have, for the 
past twenty or tweuty-five years, been engaged in the 
endeavor to give such expansion to the system of in- 
struction in the college, as to provide for the city of 
New York educational advantages equal to any to be 
found elsewhere. That an institution of learning of the 
highest grade should exist in this great city appears to 
them to be due no less to the dignity of the city itself 
than to the magnitude of the interests involved. The 
success of the efforts hitherto made toward the attain- 
ment of this end has been manifested in so large an 
increase in the attendance upon the various departments 
of the college as to have imposed upon the Trustees the 
necessity of incurring a burden of expense in the erection 
of additional buildings, such as to paralyze for the 
present, and probably for a long time to come, the 
power of further improvement. The ideal of a perfectly 
appointed university, which it has been their ambition 
and their hope to see here fulfilled, must therefore 
remain for an indefinite period, and perhaps perma- 
nently, unattained, unless the deficiency of their re- 
sources shall be supplied by the liberality of the public 
spirited citizens of New York. 

Under these circumstances, the Trustees feel it to be 
a duty, in behalf of the interests of the higher education 



6 

wliicli they represent in this great centre of population, 
to lay before the public the following full statement of 
th.e financial condition of the college and of its present 
needs. 

Columbia College is one of the few institutions of 
learning planted on this continent during the Colonial 
period, and it is the first of tliose establislied in the State 
of JSTew York. For more than -a century after its 
foundation its resources were extremely limited, and 
its financial embarrassments were often trying to a 
degree without a parallel in American educational 
history. Unlike most sister institutions of similar age, 
it kas received little aid from the munificence of in- 
dividuals ; and its benefactions from other sources have 
been few, and at tke time of their bestowal were of 
moderate value. Its present income, whick suffices to 
its actual operations, apart from the cost of buildings, is 
derived from two tracts of real estate granted, the first 
by tke corporation of Trinity Ckurck, as a site for tke 
college at its foundation in 1754, and tke otker by tke 
Legislature of the State in 1814, as an equivalent for a 
tract previously granted by tke Colonial Grovernment, 
bat wkick kad been subsequently lost in tke adjustment 
of inter-state boundaries. Tkese tracts, botk of tkem on 
Mankattan Island, were of inconsiderable value wken 
granted, being situated beyond, and one of tkem very 
far beyond, tke limits of tke settled part of tke island; 
and tkey liave only attained tkeir present importance as 
sources of income from tke growtk of tke city during 
tke past forty years. During all tkis long period but 
two gifts of substantial value kave been received irom 
private sources, one of them a bequest in 1843, from 
Frederick Gebha-rd, of twenty thousand dollars for the 
foundation of a Professorskip of German, a sum inade- 
quate at present to maintain tke ckair witkout aid from 



the general fund ; and tlie other, a bequest of con- 
siderable but uncertain amount, by the late Stephen 
Whitney Phcenix, which, with the exception of a library 
of nearly seven thousand choice volumes, is not likely to 
be available for many years to come. 

The actual financial condition of the college at the 
present time will be understood from the following 
detailed statement. The lands referred to above are 
subject to leases, for long terms, of separate lots, the 
bu-ildings belonging to the lessees and only the lots to 
the college. Besides the foregoing properties, the 
college holds the equitable and benefijoial title to about 
nine acres of land near Carmansville, and to two lots of 
land and a factory in One Hundred and Twenty-ninth 
street. There was, too, a fund arising from savings, 
which has now been wholly expended in buildings. 

The following comparison of the ordinary annual 
receipts and payments will exhibit the^neans of the 
institution to pay its annual expenses on its present scale 
of operations : 

REVENUE. 

Fees of Students.. $131,543 

Rents of Real Estate 214,849 

1336,393 

EXPENDITURES. 

Salaries of Professors, Assistants, and other officers 

and servants $217,400 

Repairs and alterations of buildings 3,700 

Library .• 7,000 

Interest (this item will be largely increased in subse- 
quent years) 7,000 

Current expenses, including Supplies, Fellowships, 

Scholarships, Prizes, Furniture, etc 63,590 



Surplus $37,702 



This surplus, whatever it may amount to, is always 
applied to the cost of new buildings, to provide further 



8 

for whicli cost a debt of $102,000 was incurred prior to 
the SOih day of September last. 

The buildings above mentioned are part of a series, 
the erection of which has been determined on. It is of 
great importance that the projected plans for these im- 
provements should be executed as soon as the means of 
the college will allow, so as to afford the requisite accom- 
modation to carry out with efficiency the present scheme 
of instruction. It is estimated that the debt incurred 
for this purpose will, at the end of the present financial 
year, on the 30th September next, amount to $300,000, 
and, before the contemplated buildings shall be completed, 
to about $750,000. Reliance for the means to pay this 
debt and to defray the cost of such construction is 
based upon the reasonable expectation of an increase of 
rents. But the debt cannot be wholly paid from this 
source before the year 1 893, and in the meantime the 
power of the college. to engage in new undertakings 
must be very much restricted. 

In regard to what has been done in the past the fol- 
lowing brief statement is submitted. It is now about 
twenty-five years since the growing income of the 
college began to attain proportions such as to justify 
the Trustees in endeavoring to increase its usefulness 
by enlarging the scope of its educational operations. 
Accordingly, in 1858, they established a School of Law, 
the reputation of which soon became coextensive with 
the country^ and of which the success has been entirely 
without example. This was followed, in 1864, by the 
creation of a School of Mines, which, though at first con- 
fined to the object expressed in its name, has since been 
expanded into a School of Applied Science generally, 
embracing instruction not only in Mining Engineering, 
but also in Civil Engineering, Metallurgy, Analytical 
and Applied Chemistry, Practical Geology, and Archi- 



9 

tecture. This institution has met a great public want, 
and has l3een steadily growing in the public apprecia 
tion from the beginning. In 1880 there was instituted 
a School of Political Science, designed to train young 
men in the knowledge of constitutional, administrative 
and international law, and to fit them for the duties of 
public life. 

At the same time it was resolved to open a depart- 
ment for the advanced instruction of graduates of this 
and other colleges. The college has thus entered upon 
a field of almost limitless extent, to the satisfactory 
occupation of which its present resources are unequal. 
The Trustees are, nevertheless, constantly solicited to 
make provision for instruction in branches of knowledge 
not hitherto included within the range of their pro- 
gramme, but for which there is an urgent and growing 
demand among our people. These solicitations bring 
forcibly to their attention the fact that while, in what- 
ever has been attempted, the thoroughness with which 
our educational work is done is nowhere surpassed, yet 
there are points in which some of our sister institutions 
have sensibly the advantage of us. And there are also 
points in which all American colleges are materially 
behind the wants of the country. It is, indeed, in the 
department of superior, or what has been called supple- 
mentary, education that the educational system of the 
United States is at present most defective While the 
number of American colleges is quite in excess of the 
needs of the country, there is nowhere among us an 
institution which meets the wants of men who, having 
reached the limit of what is commonly understood by 
the phrase, "a liberal education," propose to devote 
themselves to the profound study of some special 
subject, and seek to be trained to methods of research 
in history, literature, philosophy, philology, economics, 



10 

matliematics, or physics. This is true to such an unfor- 
tunate extent that, at this time, great numbers of the 
graduates of American colleges feel themselves con- 
strained to resort to the universities of Continental 
Europe for that supplementary education which they 
cannot find at home. Of the gentlemen now engaged in 
giving instruction in Columbia College, no fewer than 
sixteen prepared themselves for their work in foreign 
universities, and three others, now under appointment, 
are at this time completing their preparation abroad. 

The most urgent of the educational needs of the 
United States at present, therefore, is that our people 
should emancipate themselves from this state of depend- 
ence upon distant lands for their highest intellectual 
culture. Our young men should be relieved from the 
necessity of resorting to foreign universities, by the erec- 
tion of a fully equipped university, or more than one? 
upon our own soil. Much has been written upon the 
importance of such a measure, and some efforts have 
been made toward its accomplishment. These efforts 
have been directed toward the building up, upon a few 
of the leading colleges of the country, already possessing 
financial strength suflicient to furnish a broad and firm 
foundation, of a complete system of university teaching. 
Columbia College is one of these few institutions. Its 
scheme of instruction already extends far beyond the 
limits of the traditional programme of undergraduate 
study, and in many directions it is already fulfilling the 
functions of a true university. With a generous support 
from the friends of intellectual progress in the city and 
the country, it might easily be made to do so in all 
directions. 

Nowhere upon this continent can be found a more 
fitting seat for a great university than is furnished by 
the city of New York. The physical geography of the 



11 

country lias made this city the great centre of popula- 
tion and movement. Toward this point converge the 
great lines of transportation which permeate the intei'ior, 
along which are constantly rolling in upon it the produc- 
tions of native industry, which find here their principal 
mart of exchange for those of other lands. Hither also 
are continually dTifting in crowds the producers them- 
selves, drawn from the remotest recesses of the continent 
to visit the great emporium of the country's commerce, 
and the focus of its intellectual as well as material activity. 
Here is heaped up the wealth which millions of hands 
have created, and here are illustrated the results of the 
highest culture the age and the race have produced. It 
is in great capitals like this that the noblest universities 
of the world have grown up. While in some of the minor 
towns of Germany there are at this time universities 
which have honorably distinguished themselves in 
special departments, it is in such magnificent establish- 
ments as the Universities of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna 
that the comprehensive idea of a perfectly appointed 
university is most fully exemplified. 

To transform Columbia College into such a university 
would now be comparatively easy. It would only be 
necessary to supply such deficiencies in her present 
scheme of instruction as those to which the attention of 
the Trustees has, as above stated, been of late frequently 
drawn, but to which their present resources are not 
equal. A few of these may be mentioned by way of 
illustration, without attempting to make the enumera- 
tion exhaustive. Archaeology is a subject in which the 
world of letters was, some forty years ago, profoundly 
excited by the extraordinary discoveries made of As- 
syrian ruins by Mr. Austin H. Layard, an interest which 
the more recent successes of Dr. Schliemann in the Troad 
and the Peloponnesus have greatly stimulated. Societies 
L«jfG. 



12 

have been formed for the promotion of archaeological 
discovery, and a classical school has been opened at 
Athens, with an American scholar at its head, for the 
training of archaeological investigators. No provision 
exists in our college for imparting instruction in this 
highly important department of modern inquiry. Com- 
parative philology is another subject which is not only 
interesting in itself, but is an important instrument for 
tracing the affinities of peoples and the affiliations of 
races. In the scheme of instruction of a few of our sister 
colleges, this subject has been included ; and one or two 
American philologists have already, in consequence, 
achieved a world-wide reputation. But this is one of 
the departments as to which Columbia College has still 
to acknowledge herself deficient. We are wanting also 
in a department of Oriental Literature. This is the 
more to be regretted, inasmuch as a chair of the Hebrew 
language and literature was established in the college in 
1830, and was maintained for more than thirty years. 
In Natural History, our college is largely deficient, 
having no chair of Botany or Zoology, or Biology or 
Physiology. AVe need also to develop the department 
of Sanitary Engineering, which has been provided as a ' 
part of our instruction in the School of Mines, but not 
yet extended as it should be, on account of want of 
means. We have no chair of Physical Greography nor 
any School of the Fine Arts. Our system of instruction 
in modern languages and foreign literature has been 
planned after a more comprehensive and logical method 
than has distinguished the same department anywhere 
else in this country ; but the course of its development 
has already given rise to demands upon the resources 
of the institution which it is impossible adequately to 
meet. We are without a laboratory for physical re- 
search, or for organic analysis ; but these wants have 



13 

been prospectively provided for by tlie benefaction, 
above referred to, of the late Mr. Stephen Whitney 
Phoenix. 

But perhaps the most urgently pressing of the wants of 
our college at present, considered as a school for the train- 
ing of scholars or scientific inquirers to the methods and 
practice of original research, is a provision for an immediate 
and extensive increase of our working library. The total 
number of volumes in the library of the college is only 
about fifty thousand at present ; but it is a subject of 
gratification that about one-half of these have been 
selected especially with reference to the uses of investi- 
gators in law, in political science, in the exact sciences, 
and in classical and modern literature and philology. 
There i« need, nevertheless, that these numbers should 
be increased without delay, at least three or four fold. 
Authorities are the tools of original research. Without 
them there can be no progress.*^ This, however, is not 
all. Not only is an immediate and large increase of the 
library of the college to be desired ; it is of no less im- 
portance that there should be a fnnd for its permanent 
maintenance. In this respect, Columbia College is far 
behind a number of her sister institutions. Lehigh 
University, Penn., has a library endowment which 
yields an annual income of twenty-four thousand dol- 
lars. Harvard University, with nearly an equal amount 
derived from endowment, increases the sum annually by 
a considerable appropriation from the general fund. 
Cornell University is understood to have a library fund 
exceeding a million of dollars, of which seven hundred 
thousand has been invested at six per cent, interest, and 
yields an annual income of forty-two thousand dollars. 
Columbia College cannot maintain the footing of a 
properly appointed university until she has a provision 
for her library at least in some degree comparable to these. 



14 

The college is dow, unfortunately, laboring, as lias 
been already stated above, under the burden of a heavy 
debt, v^hich is likely to be materially increased before it 
can be diminished, and which it will require years to 
extinguish — perhaps ten, possibly more. Were it re- 
lieved from this burden, it could do something tov^^ard 
the supply of the existing deficiencies in its scheme of 
instruction ; but it could not even then provide for them 
all. It is the hope and belief of the Trustees that among 
the friends of education in this city and its vicinity 
there are many who are sufficiently impressed with the 
importance of building up here a university of the 
highest order, to be willing to lend their aid in accom- 
plishing an object so desirable. 



15 



For the purpose of exliibiting more specifically the 
particulars in which Columbia College needs to be 
strengthened, in order to raise it to a level of a true uni- 
versity, the following list has been prepared, which 
embraces the objects earliest requiring provision : 

Annual llevenue ; Endowment 
OBJECTS TO BE PEOVIDBD FOR. Needed. Required. 

Library |25,C00 $500,000 

Archaeology.... 10,000 300,000 

Ethnology and Anthropology 10,000 200,000 

Comparative Philology 12, 500 250,000 

Oriental Literature 7,500 150,000 

History, Philosophy, and Art of Educa- 
tion— Pgedagogics 7,500 150,000 

Law and Political Science 10,000 200,000 

Commerce: History, Material, and Statis- 
tics of ....'. 7,500 150,000 

Botany^.... ' 10,000 200,000 

Zoology , 15,000 300,000 

Physiology 10,000 200,000 

Astronomy and Geodesy 10,000 200,000 

Biology 12,500 250,000 

Physical Geography 7,500 150,000 

Modern Languages and Foreign Literature. 15. 000 300,000 

Sanitary Engineering 10,000 200,000 

Electrical Engineering 12,000 250,000 

The Fine Arts 35,000 500,000 



Totals $217,500 $4,350,000 



LIBRARY OF 



0J^J29 031 1 



